Desegregation judge drops hammer on Huntsville schools, 'Court cannot find conclusively that the Board does not operate a dual system.'

"Thus, the Board provided little opportunity for meaningful community feedback after it announced its school assignment plan."

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- The judge ruled late today in Huntsville's months-long desegregation dispute, clearing the way for federal attorneys to roll up their sleeves, dig deeper and and stay longer.

U.S. District Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala didn't approve the city's plan to redraw school zones.

And she didn't approve the Justice Department's plan.

Instead, she appointed Chief Magistrate Judge John Ott to oversee months of mediation between the two as they examine all aspects of racial disparities across Huntsville City Schools.

She also called for appointment of a Special Master to oversee the court's ongoing fact-finding in the case.

The judge's 107-page ruling, complete with dozens of attachments, questioned whether Huntsville school officials have acted in good faith in recent months and whether the city has done enough over the years to blame inequities on housing patterns.

U.S. District Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala

She held Huntsville did little to prepare black students for AP courses and then blamed the students for not taking them. She found the board's commitment to the Johnson High magnet to be "lukewarm." She castigated Superintendent Casey Wardynski for moving around application deadlines and "chiseling away" at court-ordered transfers that allow black students to switch to majority white schools.

She ordered the board immediately remove from its web site a PowerPoint presentation criticizing those majority-to-minority transfers and immediately remove another asserting the system had met the desegregation requirements regarding teaching staffs. She said the board did not meet any requirement until the court had ruled.

And she didn't accept the hurried "community conversations" as adequate community participation in the city's rezoning efforts. She wrote the meetings were held days before the plan was submitted and Wardynski himself acknowledged no changes were made as a result of meeting with the public.

"Thus, the Board provided little opportunity for meaningful community feedback after it announced its school assignment plan."

This year's contest in the 51-year-old desegregation lawsuit, Hereford v. Huntsville, stemmed from the system's attempt to redraw zone lines. The U.S. Department of Justice serves as the plaintiff in the 1963 suit that ended a dual system based on race.

The Justice Department had objected to Huntsville's rezoning efforts, arguing the city combined two majority black high schools and placed more students in more segregated environments. Huntsville on Feb. 7 opted to seek the judge's approval, despite federal opposition.

That plan officially and dramatically backfired.

Judge Haikala took particular exception to much of Wardynski's testimony, from finding his comments on federal grants untrue to finding insubstantial his objections to the federal rezoning proposals.

"The Court strongly suspects that the district has chosen not to share many of the reasons for the choices that it made as it shaped its student assignment plan. The Court got a glimpse into the superintendent's thinking when the United States's cross-examined him about his objections to the government's rezoning proposals. When asked whether Hereford (Elementary) students would not benefit from attending Huntsville High, the superintendent, in an unguarded moment, replied '[t]hey [would] be going into schools that are not accustomed to dealing with students who are below grade level.'

She also admonished the Justice Department, but only to say they were being far too lax.

"From the record, it appears that years of relative calm and inactivity have lulled the government into a habit of checking in only when the district proposes actions that require the government's review. The government should be more proactive. Based on the current record, the Court does not know when inequities in educational programs arose in the district; however, standardized test scores from 10 years ago demonstrate disparate results among racially identifiable schools. Had the government been keeping an eye on that sort of information, it could have brought it to the Court's attention more quickly and enabled the Court and the district to address the issue in a timely fashion. "

Haikala writes that the system had asked for an answer by the end of June, and while her ruling arrived at the end of the day on June 30, deeper issues remain at play. She said she can't rule on zone lines yet, not without getting to the bottom of related issues of educational programming.

She said zoning should be addressed through mediation, while the system considers course offerings and teaching staffs and all other aspects of the system related to desegregation.

Haikala expects by the end of the calendar year to have a plan on rezoning, as well as a roadmap to unitary status in all areas. (A judge declares unitary status when a former dual system has been found to be one, retiring the desegregation order. That may happen in pieces, such finding a system to be unitary in student assignment but not yet unitary in faculty assignment.)

Haikala clearly favored the Justice Department plan, but sees obstacles there as well.

"The student assignment plans that the United States has proposed have much to offer," she writes. "In particular, the government's plan moves Hereford Elementary School, a predominantly African-American school, into the feeder system for Huntsville High."

She writes repeatedly that school officials published misleading information about the Justice Department plan when the board revealed that an early version would split numerous feeder patterns. That plan was never submitted, she notes, and therefore never proposed in court. That can create confusion in the community, she writes.

She also dismisses Huntsville's objections to the federal rezoning plan, which would send more black students to Huntsville High and rezone more white students to Lee High.

"The Board posits that the government's proposed reassignment plans are 'infeasible;'" she writes, "however, the Board's criticisms of the government's proposals boil down to a simple preference for the district's policy choices."

She rejects the board argument that the city system long ago desegregated, people moved around and there was nothing the board could do to remedy imbalances created by housing patterns.

"The record in this case is not as clear as the Board suggests, and the fact that the district integrated the student bodies of many of its schools in the early 1970s does not automatically lead to the conclusion that the district does not currently operate a dual system," she writes.

She finds there are many areas that are well-suited to being addressed by school officials, such as disparities in course offerings between racially identifiable schools.

"At the hearing on the Board's student assignment motion, the district tried to blame the students at Butler and Johnson for the absence of accelerated courses in those schools. The district administrator who determines which courses will be taught at the district's schools each year testified that all of the courses listed in the district's course catalogue, including all of the 27 AP courses, are offered to all of the students at all of the high schools in the district, but the district only teaches a handful of AP courses at Butler and Johnson because students at those schools have not requested other AP courses ... The uncomfortable truth is that in a high school in which only 33% of the students read at or above grade level, many students probably are not prepared for the rigor of college level AP courses. Students who do not read at grade level need not only encouragement but also remedial help to take an AP course."

In short, Haikala held: "On the record before it, the Court cannot find conclusively that the Board does not operate a dual system."

She ends on an up note, complimenting enthusiastic teachers, looking to the engaged community members who wrote her letters and spoke at the federal hearing.

"There are many reasons to believe that the district will meet the challenges that it currently faces and will expand educational opportunities for all of its children," she concludes.